Learning Strategies and Student Achievement – Experience from Implementation of an Educational Programme

Abstract

This article presents research on the results of one educational programme aimed at fostering self-regulation in learning among students. The programme is designed as enabling students to use Bloom’s taxonomy in their learning, which is accompanied by demystifying the assessment process, students’ new roles and activities, and changes in interpersonal relations in the teaching process. The programme was implemented in one student group in a vocational school from Belgrade. The research aimed to examine the programme’s contributions to students’ learning strategies and their achievement. Data on students’ learning strategies were gathered using the MSLQ questionnaire, while the results of knowledge tests were used as a measure of students’ achievement. For data analysis, we used descriptive statistics, t-test and Pearson correlation coefficient. The results show that the programme has contributed both to students’ learning strategies and achievement. However, the statistically significant relationship between students’ use of different learning strategies and their achievement has not been found. From socioconstructivistic viewpoints on teaching and learning, this could be interpreted by a complex interrelation between learning strategies, achievement and the context in which learning is occurring. Thus, it is inadequate to research them as separate variables. The pedagogical implication of the research is that for a change in the quality of education it is not sufficient to change individual segments of teaching/learning, but it is important to change the complete context.

Keywords

• learning strategies
• student achievement
• self-regulated learning
• co-regulated learning
• evaluation of education quality.